Trying To Tell Me Something?

Yesterday morning I started the day tangling with my 17-year-old about taking responsibility for the vehicle that is now primarily his to drive. I won't go into details (they are ugly), but just know that the gist of the issue was that he had left the windows down overnight, thus leaving it wide open for theft (his bandmate's guitar was in the back); and then he argued with me about going to close the windows when I pointed this out along with the fact that it was thundering and about to storm.

He didn't want to get out of bed to do it, and then began mouthing off to me about the whole thing. I responded by telling him that if I ended up being the one to find his keys and close the windows, that I was going to remove the key from his ring and he wouldn't be driving the vehicle again until we came to an understanding about his attitude.

To recap: I am trying to instill some sense of responsibility here in this kid.

Well, he chose to stay in bed and I did what I said I would, taking the key and putting it in my pocket.

Fast forward to early last evening when I realize the key is no longer in my pocket - the key that is the only key that will start the engine on that vehicle. The rest are valet keys and will only unlock the doors. Hmm. Sean reminds me that we will probably have to call GM and pay a gazillion dollars for a new engine key if I cannot find it.

I look everywhere to no avail. Nice. I have irresponsibly lost the key I took from my son for being irresponsible.

Yeah - telling Alexx that I couldn't find the key was really fun. I didn't have to. I could have just kept looking and told him he couldn't have it back yet. But that's not me - I'm a confessor, always have been.

It had to be around here somewhere because I was here all day yesterday doing laundry, remember? I did go one place late in the afternoon - a local farm market. So I looked in the van to see if it had fallen out there. Nope.

I just called the farm market on the off chance that it had dropped out of my pocket there. Guess what? IT HAD!

So the key has been located and Mom has been humbled. We all make mistakes and sometimes it's not because of irresponsibility - and sometimes it is.

But the mouthing off and arguing? Oh yeah, we're not done with that one.